Much credit to Brian Abrams at DeathandTaxes, for noticing when we reported on Wesley Snipes leaving prison a few months ago that his stay in Federal Custody in a halfway house was scheduled to end today. Abrams subsequently confirmed with the NY Community Corrections Office that Snipes will indeed be released before midnight today. And for that, we wish Mr. Snipes a hearty ALWAYS BET ON BLACK. …To receive a prison sentence when busted on charges other people plead out of.

Either way, Snipes will be free soon, so watch your back, Edgar Friendly. He’ll be free to be in Expendables 3 or to make people call him “Blade” and whatever else. Abrams has a thorough account, which I highly recommend, of the events that got Snipes put in prison and his time leading up to it, but the long and short of it is, Snipes was associated with a radical anti-tax group, got busted for it, and spent THREE YEARS in prison, as inmate #43355-018 (not 57, sadly) despite having Judge Joe Brown as a character witness.

Three years. That’s almost as long as it’s been since the Scientology guy’s wife has been missing. The irony being, if Wesley Snipes was a Scientologist, he probably never would’ve been in this mess. Anyway, welcome back, Wesley Snipes. I really hope he carved “Blade was here” into that halfway house somewhere like Shawshank Redemption.